Berkeley Audio Design
CLOSEST TO THE MICROPHONE FEED
This small, highly focused firm only offers a few models, but each one is regularly rated as among the best values in modern high end audio. Berkeley Audio Design offers uncompromising, state of the art digital converters for fans listening to any of the myriad digital sources on the market. Compact discs, stored digital music files, Internet-based streaming services, cable TV, and other sources can all bring music to us, but many of them are highly compromised in terms of quality of sound. Let a Berkeley Digital-to-Analog Converter raise the performance of your digital music sources to the level of the best studio recordings. Now on display.
Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 features:
Supports digital formats up to 24-bit 192 kHz, including MQA rendering to 384kHz, and HDCD decoding.
Digital Inputs:
1 x AES/EBU Balanced XLR 110Ω
2 x S/PDIF - BNC, 75Ω
1 x TosLink optical digitalAnalog Outputs:
1 pair balanced XLR stereo output
1 pair single-ended RCA stereo outputDigital volume & balance control: 0.1dB/step with .05dB/step L/R gain trim, 60dB range
Size: 3.5” (89mm) tall, 17.5” (445mm) wide, 12.5” (318mm) deep, 30# (13.6kg) weight
ALPHA DAC REFERENCE SERIES 3
The Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 contains breakthrough technology that redefines the potential of digital audio quality. Experienced industry listeners who have heard the Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 are unanimous in their praise, saying that the Reference Series 3 clearly outperforms any other DAC they have heard, including those with six figure retail prices, and even the much admired DAC portion of the Pacific Microsonics Model 2 studio ADC/DAC. In addition to its unprecedented PCM audio quality, the Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 also features MQA Rendering of unequaled audio quality.
“The Series 3 extends the Alpha DAC Reference’s status as the ne plus ultra in digital decoding, and will remain at the front end of my reference system....The Series 3’s deeper bass, wider dynamic expression, superior bottom-end articulation and textural resolution, and enhanced top-end openness are clearly major advances....With less accomplished DACs, it sounds as if a whole layer of very low-level information has gone missing.”
—Robert Harley, The Absolute Sound, October 2019
Alpha DAC Series 3 features:
Supports digital formats up to 24-bit 192 kHz, including MQA rendering to 384kHz, and HDCD decoding.
Digital Inputs:
1 x AES/EBU Balanced XLR 110Ω
2 x S/PDIF - BNC, 75Ω
1 x TosLink optical digitalAnalog Outputs:
1 pair balanced XLR stereo output
1 pair single-ended RCA stereo outputDigital volume & balance control: 0.1dB/step with .05dB/step L/R gain trim, 60dB range
Size: 2.3” (59mm) tall, 16.7” (424mm) wide, 10.6” (270mm) deep, 11.6# (5.3kg) weight
ALPHA DAC SERIES 3
The Alpha DAC Series 3 uses advanced technology from the award winning Alpha DAC Reference Series 3 to provide Reference Level Performance never available before at this price.
“You can think of the Alpha DAC Series 3 as a distillation of the Reference Series 3 in a less expensive implementation. The Alpha DAC Series 3 has superb resolution of low-level detail, three-dimensional soundstaging with the ability to hear very fine timbral and spatial information at the back of the hall, dense tone color, and outstanding clarity that allows you to hear individual instruments within the whole.”
—Robert Harley, Alpha DAC Series 3 Golden Ear Award, The Absolute Sound, September 2021
Alpha USB features:
Supports digital formats up to 24-bit 192 kHz, including MQA rendering to 384kHz, and HDCD decoding.
Digital Input:
1 x asynchronous type-B USB Audio 2.0 Standard
Digital Outputs:
1 x AES/EBU Balanced XLR 110Ω
1 x S/PDIF - BNC, 75ΩSize: 2.3” (59mm) tall, 10.5” (267mm) wide, 2.6” (66mm) deep, 2.5# (1.1kg) weight
ALPHA USB
The Alpha USB is an asynchronous High Speed USB Audio 2.0 to digital audio interface designed to provide the highest possible audio quality from computer and music server audio sources.
Great care was taken in the design of the Alpha USB to isolate the noisy computer/USB environment from the digital audio output. The USB receiver and processing are powered by the computer, while the output master clocks and line drivers are powered by a separate isolated linear power supply. There is no DC connection and also a high degree of capacitive and inductive isolation between the USB input and the digital audio output.
“The Berkeley Audio Design Alpha USB is a breakthrough product that not only overcomes the limitations of the USB interface, but provides a state-of-the-art method of getting audio out of a computer.”
—Robert Harley, The Absolute Sound, Issue 214